Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Adgator - The good, the bad and the money
My very first reaction to Adgator was "Dammit that's my idea". It's that sort of a concept. One that everyone thinks they should've started because it's so glaringly obvious that it's needed that it should've been done months/years/ages ago. But it hadn't been done, not in South Africa and not in Africa on the scale that the Afriguys have planned.Being the sort of blogger that I am I was extremely excited to try out what Adgator was offering in the form of an alternative to Google Adsense. Before I continue let me just stipulate that I am going to try and be as open and forthcoming with my stats, numbers, figures and cash for the purpose of this blog post. I am not earning enough money from my blogs to warrant me being secretive. The point of this post is to help people understand Adgator and have a bit of faith in the service. I will be talking through my experiences with Adgator on SA Rocks.So when the site launched I immediately contacted Justin and managed to have SA Rocks accredited for Adgator ads. I chose to make use of the 300 x 250 ad space but more on that further down.
Potential
Initially I decided I wanted to know how much I stood to earn and luckily on the Adgator site there is a calculator that will calculate how much money you could earn according to your monthly pageviews.This is what I still see:
Basically when I enter the number of pageviews SA Rocks did, according to Afrigator's analytics, from last month (16776) I am told that I should be earning over R2000 from Adgator adverts. Unfortunately this is not the case.Using February as an example according to Adgator the stats were:16587 advert impressionsR319.06 earnedThat is a fairly large discrepancy (R1692.86). However, let us go back and check through the Adgator estimator. If you look very closely underneath the blue bar above there is this:
* Projected earnings are calculated on a 50% revenue share and are quoted in South African Rand. In calculating this figure it is assumed that Adgator serves advertising for your entire inventory and that inventory has been filled by a client. All figures are estimates only and are subject to the rate agreed upon with each advertising client.
The theory
Now there is the tricky part. For me to earn the projected amount I would need to fill out my inventory with Adgator adverts, I would need a great rate to be agreed upon with advertisers, I would need there to be enough campaigns for the inventory on the site to be filled every day and night for the entire month. Then only will all of my page impressions become advert impressions and generate me the revenue that I am projected to be earning.The other major unsaid fact is that South African traffic is what is being bought the most by the advertisers on Adgator. This means that if you have 90% of your blog traffic coming from abroad you are in for poor times. With SA Rocks I've been lucky.So a quick display of these stats in regard to the Adgater estimator shows us:
SA Rocks South African traffic according to Google: 12485 local page impressionsProjected Adgator earnings: R1498Unfortunately this theory is still not as sound as one might hope, but as I have already said there are many variables that come in to play.
Too many variables
Let's be honest, that is a lot of variables to earn a rand. But it is improving and will continue to do so as Justin and his small team of three grow and gather momentum. Advertisers will come to the party and begin to book out inventory months in advance.Unfortunately that is just not the case right now and I couldn't justify keeping the Adgator code on SA Rocks. So about a month or so ago, I took Adgator off SA Rocks. It wasn't earning me money, some of the stats were completely out of whack (in my head) and I just wasn't feeling justified in removing my Google Ads from the site. So I put them back.But let us be completely honest here, unless you are generating serious traffic (at the very least over 40 000 page impressions) then you are not earning in the thousands on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis, you are earning hundreds. But if you get it up to R500 that covers your DSTV for the month and that satisfies me for the moment.Since taking down my 300 x 250 Adgator ad code in the SA Rocks sidebar I have met with Justin Hartman, MD of Afrigator, and had a long chat with him about the revenue potential, issues surrounding the lack of earning, the way the systems works and it's all quite intriguing.
On the up
With December, January and February being relative unstable, confusing and disconcerting from the perspective of the blogger, March is definitely beginning to look up.I have already carried through an average of R22 per day in earnings. If this carries on for the whole month I'm looking at earning R660 in March. That's not bad. In fact that is almost enough for me to consider moving all of my inventory over to Adgator and have 4 ad slots generating that revenue which could take me up to approximately R2500 per month just from Adgator adverts.
The payment problems
The payment problem is not only hypothetical. It's practical. We are finishing the first week of March today and I have yet to receive a payment from Adgator. I am aware of tax issues that they had recently as Lester explains:
TAXWhen we tried to run the Adgator payouts, the good people at SARS had a few questions for us. The issue was raised about whether or not we should be charging you PAYE tax since you're earning money on Adgator. We were able to make them see that you are in fact selling us goods (your inventory) at a price (the CPM), and so there is no PAYE applicable. This was a lot harder than the two sentences above make it sound, which is where the first payment delay came in.INVOICESNow that we've settled the tax issue, SARS has requested that we get an invoice from you for the inventory you sell us. Quite frankly, this would be an administrative nightmare for both you and me, which is why we're working on a very clever invoicing system that will let you do everything with one or two clicks. Here at the Gator Pen we're all about simple, efficient systems.
Now with regards to invoicing on Adgator this was a major problem that has taken some serious innovative thinking on Justin's behalf to get it right. What Justin has now done is create invoicing software for all Adgator members. This solutions has provided multiple solutions to multiple problems. One of the main problems for me was that I couldn't choose when I received payment in terms of the amount. The minimum balance is R150 but what about my choice? Well with the new invoicing system I can choose when to send Adgator my invoices. The system will tally all of your earnings month on month and add it in to a new invoice every month. So if you delay sending through an invoice from January through April it will add all the revenue you've earned over that period and put it in to May's invoice which you can then choose to submit. This is a fantastic solutions that brings us close to the Google model of holding off payments until you are happy.
Overall
On the whole I have had quite a tumultuous time with Adgator. It's a love hate relationship that unfortunately must exist between bloggers and the people paying bloggers. I have the same relationship with Google too. I'm not satisfied that the best route forward for SA Rocks is Adgator and Google banners all over the show. I think content must be king and ads detract from the overall feel of a good, content based blog.The hard truth is that for the majority of bloggers in SA the personal audience is too small is relatively limited and only a handful of bloggers will earn enough money to do this fulltime. The advertisers are desperate to get to us as bloggers but previously couldn't. If you are involved in blogging only for the money best you cease and desist for the time being. If you want ads on your blogs to pay for your DSTV subscription then my advice is to have a good balance between Adgator and Google Adsense to allow you to maximise your opportunities.I am told that right now advertisers are clambering to get on to blogs (could you send them my way?). I firmly believe that if we give it time Adgator is going to be the place to be for local bloggers to earn money. I hear whispers of people earning R450 a day from one advert.I like to support Adgator because I can see the potential. As soon as Afrigator grows and there are more staff members selling Adgator to advertisers then bloggers will benefit greatly. But for now, keep the rands and cents ticking over while the market matures and we await our millions!
Shocking: Regator rip off Afrigator... or did they?
In typical SA blogosphere style yesterday we all (myself included) jumped to the defence of Afrigator and condemnation of Regator.com.I am pleased to say that the issue has been resolved and we all look a bit silly. I am more than happy to openly acknowledge when I make an err in my ways and this was such a moment. The post below is what I wrote yesterday and how it may seem as though Regator ripped off Afrigator, Scott - one of the Regator co-founders - ensures the Afrigator guys and myself that this entire situation is merely a coincidence.What I think we should be focussing on is how the "holy trinity" hahahahaha of the techblogs, Mashable, RRW and TechCrunch quickly picked up on Regator but only RRW picked up on Afrigator.For now, like Mike and Justin have done, I wish Regator the best of luck!And dip my head for a brief moment to show that I have learned my lesson and wont be jumping on bandwagons any longer (I hope). My closing words: Stii, you got it spot on yet again.UPDATE:
Bring competitive rankings back to Afrigator
In my honest opinion I think Afrigator has lost some fight since it decided not to rank blogs against one another. We, as bloggers, have egos. We also believe that we are the best and like to pit ourselves against one another.Afrigator offers a unique opportunity that sites like Amatomu don't. Continent-wide competition.Basically I like to know if I am doing well nationally but also on an African basis too. Tell me if I am #20012324 in Africa or if, in fact, I am up there with the best of them.I wanna know how many SA blogs are in the top 50 in Africa, what the numbers are like comparatively; Africa vs SA.I also would them to make it useable and accessible. Don't hide my ranking on a number that appears obscurely somewhere in my profile after ten clicks. Say it loud in my profile area. Tell me on the homepage, or on the ranking page but broadcast who the top ten are, locally, regionally, nationally, on the continent etc, etc.
Amatomu adds 6 month stats graph
With the recent announcement of Afrigator's changes, updates, movements and developments it seems that Amatomu has upped their game and their focus on stats.Have a look at the new graph from Amatomu stats page:
Afrigator launch video
Last night's 27 dinner was great fun and others have blogged it already. What I am going to post is the video of Justin's Afrigator Launch Presentation.So without further delay here goes:Let me tell you that by the end of the almost 17 minute presentation my hand was in spasms. So I am pretty relieved that it worked out OK!
The Afrigator guys in one room
Just attended the 27 dinner. Was great to see many people (will blog more about this tomorrow). But was really great to see all the Afriguys together for the first time in one room:
In the picture you see Justin, Stii, Mark and Mike.I also have a very long video of Justin's presentation about Afrigator Beta! I will be putting that up tomorrow and I think it will also be featuring on the Afrigator blog at some stage.
Get your Afrigator Beta invite
Afrigator has just released their beta invites. I was previlaged enough to receive the url from Justin who told me to do what I wanted with it.What did I do? I signed up and I then blogged about it.Go forth and apply for beta now!
Afrigator Brings The GATORLOVE
Afrigator have just, as I type, implemented a new feature in to their "stats" type section. Gatorlove, as this feature has so affectionately has been named, shows you who is linking to your posts and how many blogrolls your blog/site features on.Lets have a look:
In the above image you can see the pinky/red heart showing you where your Gatorlove appears. Then next that you can see love from: blog posts and blogs. As Justin explained to me, Gatorlove from blog posts shows how many links your blog has received in actual blog posts, while Gatorlove from blogs shows you how many blogrolls your blog appears in.I think that this is a step in the right direction for Afrigator if they are going to compete effectively with the major blog aggregators (which they are fast proving that they can and will do). I am really enjoying their other features so far, the statistics graphs are interesting to look at and are more accurate to the data that I receive from my blog statistics than I have been receiving from others such as Amatomu (which I am not sure is a good thing or a bad thing yet, I mean is Ama right, is Google Analytics right, is Afri right? Who can tell?).But wait, that's not all, if you happen to click on the link "Blog Posts (#)" or "Blogs (#)" you will be taken to the actual data associated with the numbers. The link will point out exactly who is linking to what from where. Fantastic. These features have appeared on Amatomu already but I personally like to have a comparison. One set of data is never sufficient to make an adequate conclusion. Thus I am super chuffed with the new feature!Nonetheless, The Afriguys are working themselves silly to get the site to an optimum for users to truly gain the most from the services offered. I am not sure if any of these guys are still going to be married in the near future. Hmmm...I wonder If I'm ever going to get married?
Amatomu Becomes #1 Referrer on SA Rocks
Amatomu.com, as well as a string of other paths from Amatomu, has officially become the #1 referrer on the SA Rocks blog. Afrigator is extremely close behind and is creepy up to top 5. What is it like for other blogs? Let me know.